Budget2018: Tone-deaf or just populist?

THERE WERE SOME things said in the annual budget speech today without any hint of irony. In an obvious move to appease the 'aam aadmi', finance minister Arun Jaitley chose to deliver some parts of the speech in Hindi. It’s perhaps the first time the speech has been made in Hindi and English, and the use of language was, to put it politely, interesting.

Just look at what was said in Hindi and what was in English. Sops for women, the poor, and some sections of the farming community were delivered in Hindi; corporate moves, taxation, defence expenditure and the like, English. Classist much? To say nothing of sexist.

If you think that’s too harsh, consider this. Socio-economic barriers keep many people from an English-medium education, and English remains the language of the elite. Given that, it seems tone-deaf to use Hindi to discuss sops, and English for things like the fiscal deficit or long-term capital gains. The underlying message seems to be that those who don’t understand English don’t need to know the state of the economy. Equally, things like the Ujjwala Yojana, which provides free gas connections to the poorest women, would have been lost on those who don’t understand Hindi.

Then, there was the bit on air travel: Ab Hawaii chappal pehen ne waale hawai yatra karenge. (Loosely translated, that’s “Now people who wear flip-flops get to travel by air”.) It’s reminiscent of Shashi Tharoor’s infamous “cattle class” remark (where the Congress politician had said he would travel “cattle class in solidarity with all our holy cows”.)

The budget speech was strewn with such examples. Farmers, “kisan bhaiyon”, are clearly only male; never mind the thousands of women who work on farms across the country. Then there was the bit about construction of toilets. That was in Hindi, because if you don't have a toilet in the house, you must be Hindi-speaking.

Charitably inclined readers may feel too much is being read into what was clearly a move to appeal to the Hindi belt. But against the “Hindi imposition” claim that has long been levelled against successive governments, this move comes across as insensitive.